Page 68 of Burden to Bear

Oh, God. Was Brock going to think I was over here telling my family about him in a way that made them think there was more than just friendship between us? “Why would you want to meet him?”

My dad raised a curious brow. “Do you think I’m wrong for wanting to shake the hand of the man who’s clearly looking after my daughter when nobody else in her family can do it, when the man who got her pregnant won’t?”

I swallowed hard. Then I shook my head. “We’ll walk over there before you guys leave. Can we talk about something else for now?” I turned my attention to Albert, my eyes pleading with his. “How’s work been for you?”

He caught on, understood what I needed, and smiled. “Busy as ever. I met someone.”

My eyes widened in surprise, and I begged, “Tell me more.”

Albert chuckled. Then he sat back and told me more.

The conversation with my family shifted away from Brock, my pregnancy, and my dad’s struggle with being so far away from me.

But before I knew it, we had to wrap things up, because they needed to get back on the road to head home. We went back inside, and I threw a dress on over my swimsuit, so I could walk outside with them.

I’d hoped they’d head to the car and forget about Brock, but my dad marched right past the driver’s side door and toward Brock’s house.

NINETEEN

Mia

Those pesky nerves returned once again as I stood at Brock’s front door with my family waiting in the driveway.

I stopped them before they could get too far and begged them to wait there while I walked up to the door to ask Brock if he’d come out to meet them. This was bound to be humiliating as it was. The last thing I needed was for Brock to feel completely blindsided.

I was met with a look of total surprise when Brock opened the door. “Mia? What are you doing here? I thought your family was visiting you today.”

Nodding, I confirmed, “They are. And I’m really sorry about this, but they are just now getting ready to leave to head back home. They wanted to meet you, though. You came up in conversation today. I promise it wasn’t anything bad or crazy. In fact, that’s probably even more of why they’d like to meet you. If you’re busy, I totally understand. Don’t worry about?—”

“Where are they?” he asked, cutting me off.

I snapped my lips together, took a step back from him, and lifted my hand to the side to indicate the driveway. From his vantage point, it was unlikely he could see them standing there, but his eyes shifted between me and the direction I was pointing several times, silent questions lingering there.

“I told them to wait there, because I didn’t want to just dump them on you with no notice,” I explained. “This already feels unreasonable of me to ask you to do.”

It shouldn’t have come as a surprise given the way he’d always been with me, but Brock’s features warmed in a way that indicated this wasn’t as big of a deal to him as it was to me. “Let me grab my sneakers.”

Brock took less than a minute to slip something on his feet, and the next thing I knew, he had stepped outside, placed a hand on the small of my back, and was urging me away from his front door and toward the driveway, where my family was waiting. I might have attempted to focus on how the next few minutes would go or perhaps where I could lead the conversation after making introductions, but I was entirely too busy being distracted by the shiver that ran along my spine at his touch.

There had been a handful of occasions when Brock and I had made some physical contact. The tensest of those instances, the ones that had my belly doing somersaults, didn’t come close to comparing to how having his hand at the small of my back did.

Brock hadn’t ever touched me there, and I loved everything about the way it felt. In fact, instead of paying attention to where I was going and what I was about to do, I was thinking about how much I wanted his hand to drift lower, grab my ass, and hold me possessively.

When I glanced up and saw my family just a few paces away, I quickly shook off the naughty thoughts and attempted to come back to reality. While I took in all three of their gazes, it was my father’s I was mostly focused on. For some strange reason, I couldn’t get a good grasp on what was going through his mind.

Brock and I came to a stop a couple of feet in front of my parents and my brother, and following a brief tension-filled silence, I cleared my throat and said, “Mom, Dad, Alby, this is Brock. Brock, these are my parents, Rick and Mary, and my brother, Albert.”

Without hesitating, Brock extended his hand. “It’s nice to meet all of you.”

“Likewise,” my father said as he was the first to shake Brock’s hand.

After Brock managed to do the same with my mom and brother, my mom added, “Mia told us you’ve helped her out around the house recently.”

“Ah, just a few small things here and there,” Brock confirmed. “Nothing major.”

“We appreciate you stepping in to help her, though,” Mom maintained.

Brock gave her a nod of understanding in return. “It was no trouble for me at all.” He tipped his chin down to look at me, offered a sweet smile, and said, “And I’ve done my best to make it clear to Mia that she can always ask me for help whenever she needs it.”

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